Nāgārjuna

Key ideas

1. Emptiness is the absence of svabhāva. Emptiness (śūnyatā) is always the emptiness of something, and the something is svabhāva, ‘own-being’ or inherent existence: a nature that a thing has independently of everything else. Nāgārjuna does not say that nothing exists; he says that nothing exists in that way.
2. Dependence never bottoms out. Things depend on their causes, on their parts and on the concepts used to pick them out, and the dependence does not end in anything self-standing. Whatever arises dependently is therefore empty, which is why emptiness and dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda) are one teaching.
3. Causation and motion examined. Asking whether an effect comes from itself, from something else, from both or from neither, he finds each answer fails if cause and effect have their own natures; they depend on each other instead. A mover and its motion are treated in the same way, since there is no mover that does not move.
4. The two truths. The Buddha’s teaching rests on a conventional truth and an ultimate truth, and the ultimate cannot be taught except through conventional ways of speaking and thinking. Emptiness is not a description of a reality beyond our concepts; it corrects the mistake of projecting svabhāva onto things.
5. No thesis and no master argument. In the Vigrahavyāvartanī he says, according to Candrakīrti, that he has no thesis to advance. His refutations address one opponent’s view at a time, and later Madhyamaka divided over whether a Mādhyamika should also offer independent arguments.
6. Saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Chapter 25 of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā says that nothing whatever distinguishes saṃsāra, the cycle of rebirth, from nirvāṇa. Both are empty of own-being, so neither is a separate realm that one could reach by leaving the other.
7. The self and the means of knowledge. The self is a dependent sequence of physical and mental events, not a substance beneath them. In the same spirit he asks how the pramāṇas, the means of knowledge, are themselves established, and argues that instruments and their objects can only establish each other.

Nāgārjuna (also written Nagarjuna; c. 150 – c. 250 CE) was an Indian Buddhist monk and the founder of the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way, school of Buddhist philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia calls him “the most important Buddhist philosopher after the historical Buddha himself”. His central claim, argued in the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way), is that nothing exists by its own nature, so that all things are empty (śūnyatā), which he takes to be what the Buddha meant by dependent origination. Tibetan and East Asian Buddhists call him the “second Buddha”.

What do we know about his life?

We know very little. He lived between about 150 and 250 CE, probably mainly in southern India, and the Stanford Encyclopedia says little more can be said with confidence. The earliest biographies come from the circle of the translator Kumārajīva in China, more than a century later, and the Tibetan lives are later still. They are hagiographies: they say he was born a Brahmin and recovered the Perfection of Wisdom sūtras from the nāgas, serpent-beings, taking his name from them.

Which works are his?

The Stanford Encyclopedia lists as largely uncontested the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (450 verses), Yuktiṣaṣṭikā, Śūnyatāsaptati, Vigrahavyāvartanī, Vaidalyaprakaraṇa and Ratnāvalī. The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy doubts the Ratnāvalī and Suhṛllekha. Over 140 works in the Tibetan Tanjur carry his name; many are doubtful, as is the large Dà zhìdù lùn.

What does emptiness mean?

Emptiness is always the emptiness of something, and the something is svabhāva, own-being: a nature a thing would have independently of anything else. Some earlier Buddhist schools held that a person is only a label for a bundle of ultimately real elements, the dharmas. Nāgārjuna denies that even these have an own-nature. Whatever existed in that way would be independent of its causes, its parts and the concepts used to pick it out, but dependence never bottoms out.

Take causation. In chapter 1 he asks whether an effect arises from itself, from another, from both or from neither. If cause and effect each had a nature of its own, none of the four answers works. He does not conclude that nothing is caused, but that cause and effect depend on each other, so neither is self-standing.

This is not nihilism. The target is own-being, and the Mādhyamikas say their position avoids both extremes. The Stanford Encyclopedia compares it to an optical illusion: a ruler shows that the two Müller-Lyer lines are equal, yet they still look unequal, and grasping the arguments is not yet ceasing to see things as having own-being.

The two truths and the Middle Way

Nāgārjuna says the Buddha’s teaching rests on two truths, conventional and ultimate, and that the ultimate cannot be taught except through conventional ways of speaking (chapter 24, verses 8–10). Chapter 24, on the Noble Truths, argues that the four noble truths and the path make sense only if things are empty. Emptiness is itself a dependent designation, and that is the Middle Way, between holding that things exist by their own nature and holding that they do not exist at all.

The Stanford Encyclopedia draws the consequence that emptiness is “not to be regarded as an ultimately true theory either”: it corrects a mistaken view and does not describe how things are apart from our concerns. Chapter 25 says that nothing distinguishes saṃsāra from nirvāṇa: both are empty.

Does he hold a thesis?

In the Vigrahavyāvartanī he answers objectors, and Candrakīrti reports that Nāgārjuna wrote there that he has no thesis to advance. The Stanford Encyclopedia finds no master argument in his work: if nothing has its nature independently, no argument can settle a question apart from its context and audience, so each refutation answers a particular opponent. Later Madhyamaka divided: Bhāviveka wanted independent arguments; Candrakīrti only drew out the unwelcome consequences of his opponents’ views, and Tibetan scholastics made his the official reading (Prāsaṅgika).

Knowledge, the self and Nyāya

Nāgārjuna asks how the pramāṇas, the means of knowledge, are themselves established. If by other pramāṇas, there is a regress; if by themselves, they would have to exist independently of their objects. His answer is that instruments and objects establish each other. This discussion is largely aimed at the Nyāya theory of knowledge, and the Vaidalyaprakaraṇa is organised around the sixteen categories in the first aphorism of the Nyāya Sūtra of Akṣapāda Gautama, arguing that each is incoherent. The Nyāya Sūtra, for its part, argues (4.2.26–36) that scepticism of this kind defeats itself.

On the self he follows the Buddha’s anattā: a person is a sequence of connected events, not a substance. Nāgasena’s chariot is the classic Buddhist picture of that argument; Nāgārjuna applies it to everything. His arguments about motion invite comparison with Zeno’s paradoxes.

What was his influence?

His reported pupil Āryadeva, then Buddhapālita, Bhāviveka and Candrakīrti, built the commentarial tradition. Kumārajīva’s Chinese version of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, with a commentary (409), is one of the three treatises of the Sānlùn school. Modern readers have taken him for a nihilist, Kantian, Pyrrhonian sceptic, Wittgensteinian or anti-foundationalist.

How should you start reading Nāgārjuna?

Begin with the Stanford Encyclopedia entry, then read the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā in Jay Garfield’s translation and commentary or in Siderits and Katsura’s, taking chapters 1, 24 and 25 first. The library has no free text by him, but the Dhammapada gives the early teaching he interprets, and the Buddha is the place to start.